


Afterimage

by AugustArchon



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Gen, Heir to the Shadow Games, Post-Canon, Yami no Game | Shadow Game, Yu-Jo friendship, being possessed for years has repercussions, well sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-03 21:53:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20460068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AugustArchon/pseuds/AugustArchon
Summary: Atem died, and the shadow games died with him... or so they had thought. The Millennium Items may be firmly buried, but there's still one remaining connection to their dark magic, and this time it's not one that Yugi can duel away.





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**Author's Note:**

> For my beta, puzzlerabbit, who hooked me on this concept and also Yugi's title sequence moniker, "Heir to the Shadow Games."

Yugi knows the anticipatory chill of shadow magic well—the way it makes his skin prickle, the taste of ozone on the back of his tongue as the darkness wells up in his chest. A blade of fury pulled from the fire and tempered to a deadly edge in a wash of calm. He's felt it a hundred times through the filter of Yami's experience, hovering half a step behind the pharaoh's shoulder. But Atem died, and that power died with him.

Or so they'd all thought.

The Millennium Items are lost to Kul Elna, souls finally returned home to rest, but distant thunder rumbles in his chest and shakes him to the bone.

His vision narrows and expands in the same moment until he can see the truth spelled out in each technicolor heartbeat, souls singing their deepest secrets on frequencies only the shadows can hear. Their callous ambition is sour bile in the back of his throat, but power shivers at his fingertips in answer, holding its breath. He's weightless in his own body. Like floating in the ocean, buoyed up by midnight currents. Not adrift, as he'd been when Yami took hold, but firmly present.

It's heady.

More than that, it's horrifying.

Yugi is all too familiar with how the shadows tempt even the pure of heart. He's seen them dig their claws into good men and drag them to blood, to murder, to cruelty beyond compare. His own hands are still stained with ashen murder from the days before Yami learned to control the darkness.

"Yuug?" Jounouchi asks, bumping their shoulders together to draw his attention, and Yugi realizes that he's frozen to the spot. He shakes himself, trying to distance his thoughts from the shadows, but they cling like fresh-woven cobwebs.

"I'm okay," he breathes. Try as he might, he can't tear his eyes from the professors. "No, actually that's probably a lie. I'm lying."

He sees the threads of magic waiting for him to pluck up and weave into a game. Into a penalty. There is no doubt in his mind that the darkness would judge them guilty.

"Get me out of here," he forces between his teeth. "Please."

Men will fall as he pleases.

All he has to do is choose the rules.

Jounouchi tugs his arm, forcing him to turn, and Yugi knows the moment Jounouchi recognizes the glow of Anubis' gaze. His eyes go wide as the full moon, but Yugi doesn't see them so much as sees through them—sees the uncertainty, and warmth, and neon fear, and the burning need to become strong enough that nobody can ever lay a hand him again. Sees the crimson rage, simmering, never fully exhausted. The hardened steel around pieces of his heart, melting but not truly gone.

Yugi wants it to stop.  _ Needs _ it to stop. He stumbles after his friend, trying to convince his feet that they're moving in the right direction no matter how much the shadows hunger for justice.

Only when they're firmly out of sight, Yugi tucked into a corner of the hallway beside a vending machine, does the darkness slowly recede. He grips Jounouchi's wrist like an anchor against the waves, eyes firmly shut until the tide washes out and leaves him trembling where he's knelt on the yellowed tile.

"I thought Atem was gone," Jounouchi says in a half-question. There's fear in his eyes but he doesn't pull his arm away and Yugi is grateful.

"He is," Yugi confirms, hardly more than a whisper. "I'm the only one here."


End file.
